Are You Always Ready?

You are out with friends and a drunk comes to pick a fight with you.  You are armed.  After he insults your wife and gives you a harsh shove, you nod your goodbyes to your friends and leave.  The guy laughs at your face and your friends smirk in slight disgust for your lack of manliness.  Who won?

The answer should be instantaneous to you: You did.

Let us be clear, here.  There are a lot of winning scenarios, and this by no means should stand as the “best one”.  And certainly, should this drunk follow you into the parking lot, draw a weapon, or otherwise decide that the fight is not over, you have not won yet.  You are only done with the fight when the other side says its over.  And you only win when the opponent calls the end of the fight.

We all love our guns and we have fun honing our skills.  But the reality still exists that the number one gun safety rule is an awareness of when a gun is the appropriate tool.  Part of being ready to use a gun is knowing when to not use a gun.  There might be situations where it is perfectly legal to use a weapon and take someone’s life.  But being ready also means running through various alternative scenarios in your head instead of being trigger-happy.

That’s not to say you should second-guess your training – far from it.  You are not a violence-seeking individual, either.  But how often do you walk into a room and look for an escape route?  How often to you assess your environment and establish a personal threshold? 

 

Consider: You are with your family: your wife and two kids, one of which is under two years old.  How does this change the situation from before?  Can you quickly usher your family out?  Do you tell your wife to take the kids to the car while lingering as a barrier while they leave first?  Being alert is not just noticing who walks into the room – it is having a plan.  Secretary of Defense James “Mad Dog” Mattis is attributed the quote “Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet.”  We take it a step further and say consider every possible scenario and the likelihood of winning. 

With the seriousness (both morally and legally) of taking someone’s life, it should be the last option available to us.  That is why gun training is so vitally important – it is your last chance to win (read: survive).  If your gun skills have failed, that means everything else has failed, and thus, you have failed.  You have eternally failed.

We are (obviously) big supporters of your right to carry concealed.  We seek to make each holster custom fit to your gun of choice and, in addition to safety and concealment standards, seek to make it as comfortable as possible.  But let that not lull you into a sense of complacency.  Remember what that tool near your appendix represents: your last, best hope to win.